02.07.2013 Views

TABOO: THE ACTUAL MODERNIST AESTHETIC, MADE REAL A ...

TABOO: THE ACTUAL MODERNIST AESTHETIC, MADE REAL A ...

TABOO: THE ACTUAL MODERNIST AESTHETIC, MADE REAL A ...

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

an example of those studies where Benjamin silently overlooks the generic titles of<br />

tragedy and trauerspiel) argued in ―Die Aller Edelste Belustigung Kunst-und<br />

Tugendliebender Gemühter (Frankfurt 1666): ―[w]hoever will write tragedies must be<br />

excellently well-versed in chronicles and history books, both ancient and modern, he<br />

must know thoroughly the affairs of the world and the state, in which politics truly<br />

consist‖ (my emphasis 63). Trauerspiel grapples with the incidental details – the sighs<br />

and moans that really govern political action – upon which general histories of cause and<br />

effect rest.<br />

The signal truth, for Benjamin, that the things of history were the substance that<br />

informed the content of the trauerspiel lay in the fact that the trauerspiel had traditionally<br />

been a form reserved solely for princes to write. The Prince‘s position, as the only<br />

autonomous social agent that could effect political change, intrigued Benjamin, who had<br />

the temerity to seek in the conditions that underpin particular kinds of aesthetic<br />

production an explanation for why kings felt themselves to be autonomous writers of<br />

history. He did this by using examples of Royal forays into dramatic writing that he<br />

determined were precursors to ―trauerspiel-writing.‖ These included Julius Caesar‘s<br />

Oedipus, August‘s Achilles and Ajax, and Maecenas‘ Prometheus. It was, Benjamin<br />

argued, these princes‘ exposure to the mythical elements within the subject matter of the<br />

plays that they were concerned enough to rewrite that contributed to the making of their<br />

own biographies, their own fate, entirely different objects. That is, these writer-princes<br />

become knowable as figures in the bastard-genealogy of trauerspiel that Benjamin<br />

describes because of their enlightened aesthetic apprehension of the mythological falsities<br />

and the ―family of heroes‖ trope upon which kingship rested. Shakespeare‘s ―Julius<br />

31

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!